Attributing mental attitudes to normative systems
Guido Boella, Leendert van der Torre · 2003
The role of norms in the formalization of multiagent sys-tems is to stabilize the behavior of a multiagent system,and thus they play the same role for such systems as in-tentions do for single agent systems. However, it is still anopen problem whether they should be represented explicitly,for example in a deontic logic, or they can also be repre-sented implicitly. Boella and Lesmo [1] propose a definitionof obligation in terms of beliefs, goals and desires, inspiredby Goffman’s game-theoretic interpretation of norms and byrecursive modelling. The aim of this definition is to distin-guish various reasons why agents fulfil or violate obligations.In this paper, we extend [1]’s definition of sanction basednorms by explicitly attributing beliefs, desires and goalsboth to the bearer of a norm and to the normative system.Boella and Lesmo [1] propose to attribute mental statesto normative systems such as legal or moral systems, as aninstance of Dennett’s